An atar over 80? Very worried..

[TrueSone]

Hi guys, sorry about another "can I get ~~~ atar" thread, but I am genuinely worried about the way I am going at school at the moment and it will be real nice if I can get a clear clarification as to where I am at now and what I need to do to improve.
Note that my school is definitely not a school of high rankings so that may affect my atar?
Anyways. Here's my SAC marks so far into the year:
Further: 92%, 84%
Legal: 90%, 78%
Psychology: 82%, 84%
Biology: 73%, 83%, 85%
English: A+ (Oral presentation), A (Language analysis), A (Second language analysis)
I know my sac marks this year are very extremely average and this worries me. Most of my subjects are not high scaling subjects so at this rate, what kind of atar am I looking at towards the end of the year? If it's under 80, what do I need to improve on? Will I need A+'s across the board for my subjects? I thank all of you for the help in advance!

[random_person]

{SAC RANKINGS} -All you need to know about it-

This should tell you all you need to know.

[Adequace]

Like random_person said, check out that link. It pretty means that your rank in your cohort is what we need to know, not your percentages.

[brenden]

The most important thing for you to do would be to start exam preparation if you haven't already. (And before I have 13,000 kids freak out... I don't mean do 50 practice exams, I mean start studying like you were studying for the exam... because you are).

So, I just plugged in 37 to all of your subjects on ATAR Calc, and it told me that would get you an 83 ATAR, so that's probably about what you should be realistically striving for. So, you'd need As/A+s on your exams in order to safely achieve those scores. So I'd find out what it takes to get an A in terms of marks in any given subject, (i.e., "Okay, I need 73% in the Legal Studies exam to get an A"), and that gives you a measure of how well you should know the content. For example, take a Legal Studies exam right now on only the things you've studied and I promise you that you will get slaughtered. Get your teacher to mark it - you'll probably get like 50%. That will give you an idea of the level you need to be at. From then on, when you revise, you can revise a concept until the point that you believe you would be x% on the exam, if the exam were ONLY on that topic. (In fact, this would be silly - you should revise concepts until you believe that, if that were the only concept tested on the exam, you could get 100%. If you move on prior to this point, you haven't revised properly. If you get 73% on the exam, it should only because you made 27% worth of mistakes in the moment, and not because you skipped something in revision).

So yeah, you can totally get an ATAR, but you need to get serious about the way you study, because looking at your SAC grades, they're actually really high scores. But you say your school is not great and that these scores are 'average', so I can only assume there are lots of people getting these scores, which tells me your SACs are easy - which further tells me that a lot of people are going to get shitty study scores, because they're going to assume that they're geniuses and don't need to revise for the exam. I was in a school like this, haha. Just make sure you really revise properly, and revise like you were going to sit the exam only on each topic. Worked for me, and I think it's a method that really makes sense.

[sjayne]

There's nothing wrong with your sac scores. They're really good!!

Just take a deep breath and stop thinking about the numbers. All you can do is try your best.

Good luck! and I'm sure you'll do fine

[TrueSone]

In regards to my Cohort ranking, it's really bad... It's ranked in the 340s when I checked on the VCE secondary school ranking website. I heard the average ATAR for my school was around 40 2 years ago...
But anyways, my sac marks on the other hand compared to the rest of my class though, is not bad at all. I am consistently in the top 3 in my class among my sac marks (except for those 70s :/ )
However, I consider my scores average because I know of people who have barely gotten a 40 study score on subjects that they have gotten A to A+'s in, and it worries me since my marks are ,on average around the 80s for my subjects, and these are not even subjects that have high scalings.

[TrueSone]

On a side note! What is a  "effective" way to revise for SACS/exams alike? At the moment, my method of revision is strictly limited to making SAC prep notes based on the dot points that my teachers provide prior to a sac...it's showing decent results as of now but I am aware that this is definitely not the most effective way to go about revising.
So if I may, how could I revise effectively guys? I know of the study design but the structure of it really confused me when I attempted to use it for my outcome 1 legal SAC, I didn't really understand how to use it and what to do with it.
So if I may, how do you guys revise guys? Please give a newbie some tips! >.<

[Mieow]

Honestly we can suggest various study methods but you'll have to experiment and see for yourself which works best. Your SAC marks don't even look that bad and if you're ranked at/near the top then there isn't much to worry. I can really only give advice on Bio since that's the only subject we have in common. I'm sure you spend a lot of time trying to get the concepts/metalanguage down, but make sure you're also answering the question properly, like using the right biological terms and answering the question in a very clear, straight-forward way. I also found that doing exam questions early helped a lot as well - the thought-processes that go into answering exam questions aren't very similar to textbook or even SAC questions so it's best to get used to them early.

And yay to another SNSD fan on this forum~!

[sjayne]

My school was ranked about 300 so if you're near the top then don't stress

[TrueSone]

Hmm, not "that" bad... meaning I should still be worried huh? ^^"
You're actually spot on about the metalanguage thing haha, I try really hard to memorise the content and concept of the topics but I tend to overlook on how I approach a question and I guess that's lost me a few marks huh?
If any of you can be so kind, is there some kind of guide I can refer to in regards to using a study design? Because I feel like it's going to really benefit me if I can just get the hang of how to use it haha

[heids]

^I found that the study design was virtually useless for Maths, English and Humanities subjects.  But for HHD and Biology (I don't know about any other subjects), I used it heaps.

Basically, I used each dot-point in the Key Knowledge section as a 'heading' in my notes, so that when writing notes from my textbook, if it didn't come under one of the dot-points, I wouldn't bother learning it.  This way, I wouldn't learn anything that wasn't necessary, but I would make sure I didn't miss anything either.

An effective method of studying for me was every night to take one dot-point from the Key Knowledge.  Without any notes, I'd write down everything I could think of that was related to that dot-point, to test my knowledge.  Then afterwards I'd get my notes and check over what I'd missed or got wrong; I'd then revise this the next morning.